Move to spend $2.6m on school road safety

Mangapapa School Logging Truck Safety.

A plan to improve the safety of children on roads near their schools moves a step closer tomorrow when a $2.6 million proposal comes before Gisborne District Council’s Assets and Infrastructure Committee.

Tairawhiti Roads has received frequent and numerous complaints about road safety around schools, and requests for something to be done about it.

The School Prioritisation Programme was born out of that and has involved a study by traffic consultants GHD, who provided a strategic outline of the road safety risks around schools in the district.

In the past 10 years statistics show there have been two serious injury road incidents involving Gisborne schoolchildren, and 20 minor injury incidents on roads within 250 metres of schools. All the incidents happened in the Gisborne urban area.

The 50 schools in the district enrol more than 9000 students each year.

“Given the low number of incidents and the number of trips to schools involved, the individual risk to students in the 250 metre zone was over 1 in 50 million over that 10-year period,” says Tairawhiti Roads general manager Dave Hadfield in his report on the matter.

“Given the risk level, it was decided to limit the school zone safety improvement programme to those schools considered to be at the highest risk, which enables us to put road safety funds into other high priority areas.”

Nineteen schools are on the initial priority list as others in the Gisborne region are assessed.

“A work programme has been developed around 19 schools considered to have the highest risks. The engineering work proposed the installation of electronic signage, parking limit lines, no-parking lines, bus lanes and parks.

“We also proposed the installation of dragon’s teeth road markings, triangle-shaped markings designed to slow traffic down.”

The schools involved were consulted at the end of last year and asked to outline their challenges and concerns relating to road safety.

Mr Hadfield recommends in his report to tomorrow’s committee meeting that the council agree to provide $300,000 a year from the minor improvement budget for the programme.

“With a budgeted cost of $2.6 million to get the programme completed across all 19 schools, there would be an approximate nine-year time frame if that is agreed.

“The committee might want to increase the yearly investment in the programme but there are other safety projects that need to be implemented.”

Mr Hadfield says he believes what is proposed provides an achievable balance.

The prioritisation list showing the most at-risk schools has Gisborne Girls’ High School on top.

“The rough preliminary cost estimate for that work is $86,000.

“Then comes Mangapapa School at $190,000, Kaiti School at $57,000 and Makauri School at $225,000.”

The other prioritised schools are Ngatapa $65,000, Rere $75,000, Te Hapara $192,000, Te Wharau $114,000, Wainui Beach School $40,000, Te Kura Kaupapa Maori o Nga Uri A Maui $90,000, Elgin $22,000, Campion College/St Marys $188,000, Central $150,000, Te Karaka Area School $96,000, Ormond $139,000, Makaraka $255,000, Ngata Memorial College $156,000, Makarika School $112,00 and Matawai School $10,000.

“This list shows only the schools that responded to our initial consultation request last year,” says Mr Hadfield.

On-site assessent work continues at other schools.

“We will progress now to detailed design and refined engineer’s estimates for the first year of the programme.

“We have completed final designs for the Ngatapa School improvements, due to prior commitments to the community, and these will be presented to the next committee meeting.”